Yesterday[^1] I wrote: «Then I found out that it wouldn't be easy to use the tiles
[generated by CloudMade] with `marble`». How wrong was I.

[Here](http://developers.cloudmade.com/projects/tiles/documents) you can read
how to access the tiles in CM's servers. The only thing you need is an API key,
which you can get once you registered (it practically begs you to get one :).
Another piece of the puzzle is `marble` itself. I was specting to copy OSM's
service description file and bend it and twist it until it worked with CM's tiles. But
things are, luckily, much more simple.

In marble you simply do «File», «Create a new map...», then select «Online map
providing indexed tiles», which clearly describes CM. Next, you have to provide
and URL template, which you can simply derive from the doc in CM's site. Mine's
like this:

    http://tile.cloudmade.com/5f806ad32bb44b38a464020fa2223193/51084/256/{zoomLevel}/{x}/{y}.png

You, of course, will have to change the API key and the style number for yours.
One thing I found is that the `@2x` doesn't seem to work with `marble`; without it
it works just fine. Maybe it's a `User-Agent` thing. Then you keep answering what
`marble` asks you in the wizard. By the end of it, you'll have `marble` working with
your tiles! It's amazing.

One extra hack was to add support for hillshading. These are tiles that are
alpha-blended with OSM's, wich gives you the impression of viewing a 3D map (bah,
at least in the covered regions with mountains). The service files (`.dgml` files) are
actually XML files quite easy to edit if you defocus and just look at the big
picture ot if. So I just simply opened both files (OSM's is in
`/usr/share/kde4/apps/marble/data/maps/earth/openstreetmap/openstreetmap.dgml`,
the one you created in `$HOME/.local/share/marble/maps/earth/foo/foo.dgml`),
copied the texture tag that describes hillshading, pasted it in my `.dgml` file,
saved, reopened marble and... voilà! Even better, as hillshading is actually
another tile server, marble can share it for OSM's, OSMaRenderer and yours.

The final result is simply amazing. You can see a screenshot
[here](http://grulicueva.homelinux.net/~mdione/gallerpy/pictures/sshots/marble-cloud_made-hillshading.png).

More on my use of `marble` and OSM pretty soon.


[^1]: When I say "yesterday", I actually mean "almost 7 months ago".
    That's what took me to fix my glob and come back to writing, finishing
    this post.